On a typical front face a bank card is provided with characters in relief relative to its bearer and his bank and, on the reverse side, a magnetic track carrying information also relative to the bearer and the bank.
The payment slips in question are called bills. In actual fact, the apparatus publishes several examples of the same document collected together in a bundle of sheets or tickets, which is also called bill, and the apparatus itself is often called a billing machine.
Two of the sheets of the bill, one for the purchaser, the other for the vendor, are self-carboned, the third, which is more rigid, being intended for a processing center. The publishing taking place by printing sheets between, on the one hand, a bank card and a plate supporting the card having other characters in relief, defined further on, and, on the other hand, two printing rollers mounted on a carriage driven manually with a reciprocating movement. More exactly, the rollers are mounted on a pivoting stirrup and it is during the carriage return that the sheets are printed.
A bank card on its reverse side bears:
the name of its bearer, PA0 a number, comprising fifteen figures or so, representing the bank identity of the bearer, PA0 expiry date of the validity of the card. PA0 the name and address of the vendor, PA0 a bank identity number of the vendor, PA0 the date of the transaction, PA0 the amount of the transaction, on some publishing apparatus.
The plate of the card support publishing apparatus has, on the side receiving the card, at least three groups of characters:
The first two groups of characters of the plate represent constant data, such as those of a bank card, whereas the last groups of characters of the plate represent variable data concerning the transaction.
The variable data characters are carried respectively by printing wheels, each having a series of ten figures from 0 to 9, the wheels projecting slightly from the plate and being mounted for rotation on the apparatus so as to be able, at the beginning of the day and at each transaction, to select their angular positions and thus the values of variable data such as the date and amount of the transaction.
To be complete, it will be noted that the bill blanks each comprise pre-printed boxes for receiving respectively an operation number, an authorization number, a certificate number and the signature of the buyer.
These publishing apparatus have the advantage of being relatively simple and robust.
However, they have some drawbacks.
The wheels for publishing the date and the amount of the transaction are sometimes difficult to index to the extent that the vendors very often write the amount of the transaction by hand, perhaps also to avoid any ambiguity due to the absence of a stop before the figures of the cents.
Contrary to checks, with which they have something in common, the bills only comprise characters which can be read optically; i.e., typically they do not have CMC7 magnetically readable characters.
The result is that the bank processing of the bills is not easy; it involves acquiring all the characters again. Since the transactions are made without any connection with the processing or authorization center, they carry no guarantee as to their validity, quite apart from the risks of fraud.